1. AOTW: At the health club. In the parking lot (a big one.) I'm heading home, out the main drive. Toward me comes a woman. She is on her phone. Suddenly, she turns left right in front of me (no signal) into a lane of parking slots. I jam on the brakes. She waves daffily as she passes me, thinking, perhaps, that will compensate--perhaps even disqualify her for the AOTW. Nope. She's the winner this week. Hands down.
2. I finished but one book this week. I'm reading Jennifer Egan's second novel (Look at Me), which is quite long ... so ...
- When I retired from the Aurora City Schools in January 1997, a young teacher replaced me. His name is Len Spacek, and he's still there at Harmon School. Not too long ago he stopped by Open Door Coffee Co. to have a talk, and I learned he had published a YA novel on Amazon, so I promptly ordered it--The Final Play--and it somehow disappeared on my neat desk. But it recently emerged, and I read it during my evening hours of read-a-bit-from-several-books routine.
And I really enjoyed it. It's the story of a sophomore boy who finds out as the school year is beginning that his mother--for convenience's sake (hers)--is sending him to a boarding school, and he will not get to play that football season with the friends he's grown up with. And his gf? Buh-bye, too.
He, of course, is very unhappy.
But at the prep school he meets some key folks--his roommate, a young woman, a very influential English teacher (hey, you gotta love a book that features a Good-Guy English teacher!).
The season goes along--and it looks as if his current team and his former team are headed for a showdown in the state tournament.
I'll leave it there.
The novel has some good messages for kids: books can be cool (our hero is moved by John Irving's A Prayer for Owen Meany (as I was)), and he sees (and greatly enjoys) his gf perform in Much Ado About Nothing (a play I taught at Harmon!).
So a lot of personal resonance for me in this book--and a lot of heart, as well. The heart of Len Spacek, a heart that is capacious!
3. On Friday night Joyce and I drove over to the Kent Cinemas to see Kenneth Branagh's film of Murder on the Orient Express. (Link to film trailer.) I wasn't expecting much, to tell you the truth; it was an excuse to sit in the dark with Joyce and eat popcorn (heaven, my friends--heaven).
But we were both pleasantly surprised. I liked it. I liked it a lot. Maybe I loved it. Of course, I'm a Branagh fan--and have been so ever since his wonderful Henry V years ago (1989). The exteriors were lovely, the performances were fine, Branagh mingled comedy and horror in effective doses, and I left the theater feling both entertained and, well, informed (once again) about the astonishing dimensions of the human soul.
BTW: Some of the cast members had appeared, years ago, in Branagh's 1993 film of Much Ado--a film I used to show my eighth graders in my final years at Harmon Middle School.
4. We started streaming the Netflix mini-series Alias Grace, based on the Margaret Atwood novel--just part of the first episode so far. Kind of like it. We'll keep going. (Lots of FB friends have said good to great things about it.) (Link to series trailer.)
5. Final Word--A word I liked this week from one of my online world-of-the-day providers ...
- from the Oxford English Dictionary--interesting: we all know beloved; I did not know this form of it (though, in my defense (!), it's very rare now) ...
belover, n.
Origin: Formed within English, by derivation. Etymons: belove v., -er suffix1.
Etymology: < belove v. + -er suffix1, probably partly after beloved n.
rare after early 17th cent.
a1492 Caxton tr. Vitas Patrum
(1495) ii. f. clxxxxvi/2 Wymmen that
vtter swetly theyr wordes for to gete loue of theyr bylouers [Fr. housiers].
1610 J. Healey tr. St.
Augustine Citie of God viii. v. 304
Plato then affirme that a wise man is an immitator, a knower and a
belouer of this God [L. dei..amatorem].
1620 F. Beaumont & J.
Fletcher Phylaster v. 60 Deerly
belouers of Custards & Cheescakes.
1887 Westville (Indiana)
Indicator 22 Dec. (advt.) Christmas
has always been kept as a remembrance day by all belovers in Christian Faith.
1914 Maccabæan Sept. 95/2 An old tree bends over the river as over a
belover.
2009 C. D. Baker Forty Loaves
ix. 35 She is a believer..a belover—a
follower of Jesus.
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